The wind did finally slow a bit, and has start to clock around toward the northeast, the normal direction for the tradewinds in the eastern Pacific.

I took the time today to rig the whisker pole and set our sails “wing on wing” as we headed off more downwind. This afternoon’s fix has us 680 miles out of San Diego, about 1/3 of the trip behind us. Boat speed is good, and all runs smoothly.

But there is always a “but”, isn’t there? Our “but” today is our inverter. The electrical device that takes 12 volt DC power from the batteries and converts it to 120 volt power like you have at home. It has decided to shut itself down in an overload fault even when not connected to anything. A mystery of the universe. It might be a simple bad connection, but getting to it to pull it out for a look is quite the challenge. Maybe on the next quiet day…

It’s not a big loss in the grand scheme of things. The only thing we use it for out on the ocean is to charge the laptop batteries. The only thing we need the computer for it the get updated weather charts. If I am stingy, I’ll have enough charge to do that every other day all the way to Hawaii. And there are always the good old fashioned radio weather forecasts!